


Aftermath

by ygrainette



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s02e01 In My Time of Dying, Gen, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-18 00:17:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/873543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ygrainette/pseuds/ygrainette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the car wreck, Sam is struggling to hold it together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> A ficlet that came to me after watching In My Time Of Dying.

It's been longer than Sam can remember since last he slept, and the hospital strip-lights burn his eyes.

Somehow, he can't look away from the shell of his ( _hunting partner, childhood hero, best friend_ ) brother, even though the sight of him makes Sam feel sick, faint. Like looking at the aftermath of a car wreck.

Which, come to think of it, is _exactly_ what he is looking at.

That thought is just a little too much, and a half-laugh escapes unbidden. It turns into a splutter-cough, and he tries to pretend it sounds nothing ( _nothing at all)_ like a sob. A small part of him hates that – goddammit, if he can't cry while watching machines preserve the last shred of his brother's life, when _can_ he?

There again, that's the absolute last thing Dean would want. He'd roll his eyes, and look away, call Sam a pussy, slap his shoulder, change the subject. Always was that way, walls built up so high around him that sometimes Sam had doubted he felt at all –

Beside him, Dad makes a sound, low and grunting in the back of his throat. Time was, all John Winchester had to do was make one of those throat-growls and his boys would know _exactly_ what he meant – whether it was _shut up and let me sleep_ , or _salt all the windows and doors,_ or _duck_ , or _job well done_ , or _don't fucking push me on this,_ or _Dean, if you don't stop playing Metallica so help me God_. But it's been four years since Sam and his Dad shared the same life, and Dean is lying before them like a body on a slab, and Sam hasn't a clue what Dad is thinking.

A quick glance to the left leaves him none the wiser. Dad's eyes are dark, dark, and shuttered, his face drawn in rigid lines, jaw locked tight. Expression unreadable.

For a second it sends Sam spiralling back to the log cabin ( _the demon wearing his father's skin pacing and purring words of poison while his brother shook and pled, blood bubbling out between his lips_ ). Then he presses his hands to his eyes, inhales deeply, and is back to the present.

He starts to say, "Dad, are you okay?" but the nurse who has escorted John from his room cuts over him. "I think we'd better go, Mr McGillicutty, you need to rest."

And Dad nods curtly in assent, and the nurse pushes the rickety hospital wheelchair ( _less than twenty-four hours since being shot in the leg, even Dad can't shake that off_ ) out of the room, and Sam is, abruptly, alone.

Technically speaking there is Dean, of course, but it doesn't feel that way. Doesn't feel that way at all, staring at his big brother lying there, prone and the kind of chalk-pale that only comes after losing four pints of blood. Doesn't even feel like he's looking at _Dean_ , not really, because all of his brother's fire and vitality and the hum of energy he always brings with him, that's all gone. Dean was the most alive person Sam has ever known ( _all flirtation and tequila shots and loud music, driving fast, living fast, one-liners and stupid pranks, a hot temper, a spontaneous smile and dragon-green eyes)_ and now he is still and silent, wires sliding into his arms, tubes down his nose and throat, machines breathing for him.

He tries to tell himself he's seen worse, that they've been in worse fixes and come out swinging, but he can't. Twenty-three is young in the scheme of things, but in his time, his years hunting, Sam's seen ( _done_ ) a lot. But.

In the cabin, when he'd finally broken free of the demon's telekinesis, shot ( _Dad_ ) it, and collapsed next to Dean, he'd tried to believe that he'd seen worse. Kept telling himself that over and over as he put his brother in a fireman's lift, staggered to the Impala with Dad limping ahead to open the door, help deposit Dean on the backseat. Told himself it could be worse as he slapped his brother's face, called his name, saw his eyelids flicker and his bloodied lips part around the words _Sorry, Sam._ Drove like a maniac, every few minutes calling back at Dean, every time getting the same slurred reply ( _sorry_ ), saying to himself he'd seen people more hurt than this. And he has. He's seen more blood, worse injuries. Just not from anyone who lived. And that still terrifies him now.

It's ironic in a way – compared to the way Sam and Dad look, black eyes and busted lips galore, Dean escaped the wreck of the Impala with only a few visible cuts and bruises. Oh, and massive internal bleeding along with major head trauma.

No shiners, no broken noses, no gashes, but Sam can't think of a time Dean's looked worse. He's been beat up, covered in blood from head wounds and mud from grave-digging, he got mono at fifteen and was honest-to-God green in the face, and there was that time his heart near gave out. Even then, the time with the faith healer and when Sam summoned up a double-edged miracle for his big brother, he didn't look _this_ bad. Didn't look like a marionette with its strings cut, like some great hand had blurred the edges of him, like something essential had left him forever, didn't look ( _God damn it all_ ) like a dead man just waiting for everyone else to realise and let him go.

Just like that, Sam can't take it anymore, can't take this bare sterile room for a single second more.  He turns on his heel and walks out, trying to pretend he's not shaking, pretend he doesn't feel like he's abandoning his brother.

The hospital corridors all seem the same, overly bright lights, antiseptic smell, a maze that makes his head spin. He finds his way out of Intensive Care all right, but then the sudden opening out into a wide hall, all staircases and branching corridors, and it's too much. Back against a wall, he tips his head back, hands pressed to his temples, trying not to hyperventilate, not to panic, float away from rationality into hysteria.

Letting go of the need to hold it together, to analyse and plan and figure everything out, the role he's always played – it is so inviting. Maybe if it were just Dad, he might –

But it's not. It's Dean up there, in a coma and relying on him. _C'mon, Sammy, get a grip, you jackass._

He can almost _hear_ that needling, infuriatingly I'm-right-and-you-know-it tone. It's real enough to bring him scrabbling back a little focus, look back around and actually take in what he's seeing. On the next floor down he can see a pay-phone, and though his legs are trembling and his head is spinning, he makes it down the stairs, punches in Bobby's number.

When he hears the familiar rough Southern drawl, he could cry with relief. Instead, he manages to say, "We need – Bobby, I need you to come pick me up. And, uh, tow the Impala. I'm at the hospital."

Bobby, God bless him, asks no questions, barely hesitates, just says, "Gimme an hour."

It's an hour Sam cannot recall at all when Bobby arrives to find him sitting outside the hospital, staring into his grazed palms, eyes wide and vacant with stress. Decades of hunting have given Bobby extensive experience with people in shock, and he grabs Sam by the jacket, half-dragging him into his truck, presses a water bottle into his hands. Doesn't even ask any questions until after Sam's slowed his breathing, and they get out, head off through the scrap-yard to track down the Impala.

"Now you gonna tell me what you're doin' in a hospital? Where's that brother of yours? If you've done something to his car ..."

Sam looks at his hands, picks at a cut in the pad of his thumb. The words are almost a physical effort to drag out of his mouth. "We found Dad. Then, um. The Impala got hit by a truck. Dad's in for observation." He stops, can't go on. Bobby's unanswered question hangs heavy, an albatross at his neck.

"And Dean?" That careful-calm investigating-hunter tone he knows so well. Just usually, Sam's the one putting on that tone, not hearing it.

Another deep breath, ( _pull yourself together, for God's sake_ ) and he grates out, "In a coma."

Bobby curses under his breath, and suddenly it is _real._ Inescapable. The nightmare-after-nightmare of the last twenty-four hours really happened. As real, as true as any of the benighted impossibilities he's fought in his hunting career. Just another job. Except not. Not at all.

But that opens the floodgates, and as they walk, he explains it all. Dragging Dad out of the apartment building, Dean shooting that demon dead to save his life ( _his voice doesn't falter there, not at all)_. Bobby shakes his head, swearing again, when Sam tells him John was possessed, mouth dry from remembering the sick drop of his stomach when he saw his brother pointing the Colt at his father.

What happened next he can't explain, not really. Not truly. He still doesn't really understand what exactly it was the yellow-eyed demon did to Dean, and he can't explain ( _doesn't want to_ ) the sounds his brother made, how young and abject he sounded, can't recount the things ( _Dad_ ) the demon said, words sharper than any monster's claws. Wishes he doesn't remember his Dad's scream as he begged Sam to shoot him dead, the howl of despair as the demon fled.

He tells Bobby the facts, but it's the bare bones, the flesh and blood of it left out. Those are memories he wishes he could scrub from his mind, knows he never will. Dad's eyes predatory hawk-yellow, screaming for his death, Sam held against a wall by invisible iron bars as Dean's shirt ran crimson, the limp dead weight of him, driving white-knuckled, he and Dad snarling at each other while Dean bled out behind them.

Then they round a corner and it's there. Dean's precious black-and-chrome Impala. The car that, in the past year, has taken them from coast-to-coast, unfailing, uncomplaining. The car that has been Sam's world, his home, the only constant in all their nomadic roaming.

It's mangled. Destroyed.

All of a sudden Sam is amazed that they all got out of that car ( _mostly_ ) alive.

"Man, Dean is gonna be pissed," he says, talking on auto-pilot. Then winces a little, because what if ( _no_ ) –

He walks up alongside the car, pulls open the rear door. His laptop is sitting on the backseat, completely trashed. The upholstery is stained with blood. That sends chills up his spine, bile rising in his throat. God, that manic drive through the night, with Dean quietly ( _apologetically_ ) dying on the backseat.

Bobby is saying something about the Impala being too far gone, too much of a wreck to bother even trying to salvage – and suddenly, he thinks, _No._

Losing Jess, that brought him to some kind of edge. The days after her death are a grey haze in his memory, all colour deadened and leached out of the world, the nights he either nightmared or rode the wave of pain up into unbearable, sleepless hysteria. All that kept him from finding out what lay beyond that edge was his brother, shaking him awake, slapping him back into the present, holding him tight to keep away the worst of the panic. Dean dragged him through those nights, which now top the long list of Things The Winchester Boys Don't Talk About, until he found some kind of equilibrium again. Until he stepped back from that inner precipice.

If he loses his brother, Sam is absolutely certain he won't come back from the edge.

There is no way he is letting Dean die, and therefore they are towing the Impala so when he recovers he can fix it the hell up.

There've been times when Sam's resented him ( _the bossy son of a bitch_ ), and raged at him ( _that apocalyptic pre-Stanford fight_ ), and even hated what he was becoming _(Daddy's perfect little soldier_ ), but Dean is his brother, and he doesn't give up that easy.

Not now. Not ever.


End file.
